Simply-the-best-for-you Volunteer Community Mentor
Thank you @zamo-zuan for jumping in. I figured if anyone did PLA's it would be you. I will just add one thing in relation to PLS & that is that Zamo does tend to see some 'unusual' results on his PLS charts. If you look up his posts, you'll see that he's passionate on the subject. Maybe unusual is the wrong word, perhaps it's more category specifc. A lot of the oddities he sees on his charts, I never see on mine. I think it's b/c his category is it's own animal, but he also tracks his PL's MUCH more regularly than I do. Still, when he posts something unusual on his chart, I'll look on mine & it's rarely there. He is obviously telling the truth, as he posts the proof, but it does seem to be very category specific & I know others in the category see some of these 'oddities'. That said, it seems you may be in the same category, so keep a close eye on it.
Secondly, my comment & post of the documents I found is just logic. Search Results must have an order. Ebay takes a lot of things into account as far as placement in those results. Those things that are taken into account (all 200+ of them) do not go away, just b/c you use PL's of any sort. So yes, logic simply says everyone can't be at #1, so those things that make up Best Practices, are always still in effect. Even if tomorrow, eBay said you could buy the #1 spot, I'm sure 100 people would line up to do that, so what order do you put those 100 listings in?
Also, something I harp at a lot on here, but it bears repeating. Search Criteria is critical in determining sort order of results BUT it's the one variable we have no control over & can't predict. You obviously are more aware of that than the average seller, since you're experimenting with PLA, but sellers tend to forget about or negate the importance of Search Criteria. Yes, Best Practices are important, but you can have all the Best Practices in the world, but if you don't match on Relevancy with the elusive Search Criteria, you won't be seen.
All that said, I have seen cases, even documented a few on here, when the #1 result of my search has little to do with my criteria. We have theorized that those have been PLA listings with high budgets.
Took some time, but I found the thread I was thinking of
https://community.ebay.com/t5/Selling/Incorrect-search-result/td-p/33114129
you'll see screen shots showing that the #1 results does not match ANY of my search criteria.
@redlinear wrote:I hate that. I consider that to be a problem, but am not "entirely" convinced a promotion is causing it (not just the promotion anyway).
There's a video somewhere, where a guy promoted some items at 100%. (others listings, less related to his search, were shown above his item).
SO, he was not able to buy his way to the top...even when his title matched his search far closer than the top spot.
I feel there's a lot of lottery to search results. I do think certain factors weigh a search toward those factors.
BUT, the things we think are important...may not be.
The ONLY thing I've found for certain is that the time/date is important. New listings get seen more than old.
And something about a listing at 90 days matters
Well, look, none of us knows. I don't even think eBay knows. As someone who worked for a huge software company for a decade, my job was going to Fortune 100 co's & showing them how they could use our product to debug their legacy code. Our product was the industry standard & there was not a single instance when their 'biggest problem' couldn't be found. 99% of the time I knew what their problem was before we ran a single thing. They weren't running the version of the code they thought they were running 🙂 Through modifications, employee attrition, distributed locales & other reasons, it was very common for no one to really know what was going on in the code anymore. In that vein, I think it's quite likely that even eBay programmers at this point do not know how/why "the algorithm" behaves in certain ways. In fact, eBay admitted as much recently when it was stated that they don't know why "the algorithm" seems to favor listing every day. I don't recall where I heard that, I think it was one of Ebay's podcasts. So, yes, to some extent we're all guessing LOL. Hopefully intelligent guesses based on some things Ebay has shared with us.
As for the date, the actual date is not significant, but you are correct that the relative new-ness IS significant & the 90 days absolutey is. The 90 days I can tell you why. Ebay considers a listing stagnant at 91 days. There's even a Stagnant Listing report that they can run, I'm not sure if you can run it yourself, but you may be able to. That doesn't mean it won't sell, but it does drop down in search results, as the algorithm favors new. The date isn't what's important though, as a listing can be considered new just by doing a Sell Similar. I have listings that are 5 years old, but you'll never know which they are b/c I constantly end & restart.
That said, I DO believe that Ebay knows when you are just relisting an old item using Sell Similar vs. listing a new item. This has recently been confirmed to me with it being stated that "in many cases" they can tell, so it behooves you to change some things about the old listing. I don't think this is any secret, it was obvious to me, years ago. What I don't know is HOW they know. In the past I've done some rather detailed experiments to try & determine how they know, but I didn't come to any solid conclusions.
I don't personally think there's a lottery to it, but I do think they have likely lost control of "the algorithm", which back when it was introduced, they told us has over 200 criteria that are weighed & used in ranking. I also don't think it's 1 algorithm, which is why I put it in quotes. For ease of understanding, everyone calls it "the algorithm".
IDK if any of that helps you, but for sure the stagnant listings is a real thing & for some reason, I thought it was 6 months, but it's 90 days, that part I'm certain about.
@zamo-zuan wrote:
@simply-the-best-for-you wrote:Maybe unusual is the wrong word, perhaps it's more category specifc. A lot of the oddities he sees on his charts, I never see on mine. I think it's b/c his category is it's own animal, but he also tracks his PL's MUCH more regularly than I do.
Depending which "Guaranteed Delivery" system you might have had in 2021 when they removed the feature also seems to separate sellers in to completely different shipping systems! Which likely leads to different behavior, as shipping is considered in search.
Regarding Best Practices, they're good to do of course, but not everything eBay says is actually for the best at all times. This is something else that varies by category. They try to say solid white backgrounds are best, but that has basically NEVER worked well in Motors, and it shows in the top results. It's good to keep your listings from going "Stagnant" (which eBay doesn't mention) but long story short, if it hasn't sold in a long time and seems to have poor traffic statistics, it's good to end and make a completely new listing (not relist). A good amount of photos helps, better shipping/return policies, etc. IS to match the keywords buyers search.
@zamo-zuan I had not thought about/known about the shipping practices being used in criteria &/or seller groups. That's interersting. Just a couple of comments on the Best Practices. They have recently (as in the last month or so) backed off the white background thing. I never did it & my items were always in Google shopping, so def you gotta substitute your own judgement sometimes. Same with the old edict of no words in pictures, which became clear within a couple of days that they could not actually determine correctly/enforce, so I never paid attn to it. Though I'm sure you'll find people today who swear you can't put words in your pics.
Ebay has talked about stagnant listings in the past, but it's few & far between, to the point that I thought they were stagnant at 6 mos & just recently learned it was 91 days. Stagnant doesn't mean won't sell, I have stagnant listings sell all the time, but they are denigrated in search.
As for the Sell Similar vs Relist. Ebay always says that it is best not to end & restart listings. Personally, for me, that's not true. But one caution, you have to weigh whether the boost of the 'new' listing is worth losing all your stats, your sold numbers, your watchers, views, etc. IMO, if you sell one-offs, it's worth it, but if you sell MQ SKU's, it is probably not worth it. I don't sell MQ SKU's, so can't speak to first-hand knowledge of that. Ok. Off to do some actual work LOL.
